The 'Starmer appointed Mandelson because he needed someone to manage Trump' - not true. What happened was:
1) From the general election there was a desire in Downing Street for a political appointee
2) There was no question that the US embassy had good Trumpworld links as it was
There was this truly venomous right wing guy that I otherwise hate that said one right thing: the Labour party is an institution that radicalises middle class teachers and uni students into thinking no corruption and harassment practice is too far to win a NEC seat. Imagine what they'll do in power
Harriet Williamson on #NovaraLive: "the stench of Labour Together is all over this.. that's what was so important about what John McDonnell said.. Labour Together was the most hollow project from the get go & it was filled with some of the most unscrupulous & mendacious people in British politics"🎯
Well done to everyone in team Starmer who decided to throw this guy under the bus.
keir is fucked bcos this guy has nothing to lose.
it's the same miscalculation 'labour together' make with voters. if you discard ppl then they no longer have a reason to back you up.
Throwing Robbins under the bus will be the biggest screw up in Starmer’s brief tenure in no 10.
My god how much grift and graft was going on?
NEW | On an odd choice…
WHY DID BBC BREAKFAST GIVE REFORM UK A SPECIAL GRAPHIC?
A small detail in a brief report sparks some big questions about what the national broadcaster is doing during the run up to local and national elections.
brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/why-did-bb...
Literally this is where and when Keir Starmer the Kid Starver came from and it still sticks to him. You don’t get retroactively rewarded for being forced to do the right thing. Especially when your initial excuse for not doing it is rejected.
It was lifted because of the blowback from not lifting it in 2024. This is why people keep bringing it up. Reeves and Starmer spent a year saying it was impossible and people didn’t believe them. And this drama was occurring simultaneously with the freebies scandal.
In case you forgot, he was against raising it before he was for it. So much he suspended MPs over it.
Rowling is an horrendous bigot who 6 years ago wrote an essay where she praised a woman who called trans people "pathetic, sick fucks." Rowling wants an end to all provisions for trans people, and to have them driven from society. Any LGBT+ org that doesn't get that are the enemy.
Praising JK Rowling when asked a question on trans rights is akin to praising Anita Bryant when asked a question gay rights. No money to Stonewall. No Stonewall at Pride. They are already experiencing a funding crisis, and this chairwoman appointment should be their last. Traitors.
While I am firm in my belief Starmer should go, and soon, isn’t it weird we’ve got sucked into a side argument over the process for a security clearance for Mandelson, the turning down of which had nothing to do with Epstein? It’s the British political class at its worst, I think.
Every reason why Starmer is unpopular is due to Starmer doing something completely by choice. From PIP and 2 Child, to the freebies, to Mandelson, to attacking trans people, migrants, refugees, etc.
He chose to do all this. No one forced him.
“maybe britain is ungovernable now” is quite funny when we should at least try a PM whose instincts don’t allow them to appoint the best friend of the most notorious sex trafficker in the world as US ambassador before we determine that
Starmer is where he is now because he doubled down on a deeply unpopular and obviously unsuccessful political strategy, with a couple of high-profile scandals thrown in. Like Julianna I do think the information environment provides a new challenge for PMs but it is not insurmountable.
The centuries of Aristocracy breeds a tolerance of elite mediocrity that is supercharged in this era of universal elite mediocrity.
my actual favourite aspect of this tweet is the way that it looks like trump thinks that all quotes in the media are messages sent and addressed directly to him
Can anyone imagine Faiza Shaheen exec director of Tax Justice doing a Dugdale and gushing about Taxpayers Alliance? That's how bad Stonewall is now.
Dugdale can hide behind the woman card all she likes but other women have guts and are not so openly bent. What's her excuse?
Can Stonewall Mark II put trans wars behind it? New chair talks of consensus but she’ll have a tough job unpicking charity’s bullying stance Kathleen Stock In the history of gay rights, there have always been fearless souls willing to face down mobs of pitchfork-wielding fanatics, but perhaps none so brave as Kezia Dugdale, incoming chair of trustees at Stonewall. In an interview with The Guardian this weekend, the former Scottish Labour leader did the unthinkable and praised JK Rowling.
If you had any doubts that Stonewall is a danger to trans people, here is Kathleen Stock praisng them in the Times.
"When the gay rights cause first got going, the ideal was toleration"
At this point, you could argue that the damage Mandelson has done to Labour over the years by far outweighs the contribution he made to its revival in the early 1990s
It boggles my mind that there are Starmer ultras when most people I know who worked for the man personally detest him.
Keir’s problems are literally Keir’s creation. Whether it is Mandelson, embracing Far Right policy, or the Freebies.
It's official: The House has sworn in Democratic Rep. Analilia Mejia.
Imagine if those cops at Uvalde with charged with manslaughter for being too chicken shit to save a bunch of schoolchildren
🫡 thank you for your service.
Oh wow that looks a lot like Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. Does it also have the subterranean tunnels between platforms?
The Palantir manifesto is effectively the same reason why Saburo Arasaka created the Arasaka Corporation. Down to the part about Japan being punished for WW2.
Except Saburo Arasaka wasn’t addicted to ketamine.
The Infowars news is funny, yes. But more importantly, it is an outright rebuke of Alex Jones' evil.
It's testament to the strength and resilience of the Sandy Hook families who survived this bullshit for more than a decade as well as the Onion, which didn't give up on this for the last 18 months.
Currently the US is at war with Cuba, that is what a blockade is, an act of war to strangle a population into submission. It was literally the strategy the US government used against the American Confederacy.
A war exists regardless of declaration, for the acts of war do not depend on legality.
